There is a flaw in that argument Ez.
Gold still doesn't produce an income and it also has holding costs. Make sure you take them into account when comparing against real interest rates.
The second flaw is make sure you take the 'real' interest rates. Why exclude housing? To make the numbers look better? Yeah, that would do it considering housing has the highest weighting on the CPI (~40% if I remember rightly)! Housing is a real cost of living...so don't exlcude it.